Open Access

Details

Published on 17 September 2012

Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) and EDP Sciences are engaged in facilitating broad and easy access to all published scientific information and have taken numerous steps in this direction, with the different services listed below. Articles published in open access in A&A are published under a CC-BY 4.0 license which allows authors to retain the copyright and others to share and adapt the content.

Subscribe to Open

From 2022, A&A is published under a Subscribe to Open model (S2O). S2O is an alternative subscription model which enables libraries to use their collections budgets to support open access publishing. Every year, existing library customers are asked to continue to subscribe, and when subscribers commit, A&A publishes that year’s content in open access. See the FAQs for more information.

An announcement is made in the first quarter of every year, following the subscription renewals cycle, regarding the status of the journal. The announcement indicates whether the content is published in open access or accessible to subscribers only in that year.

EDP Sciences and the Board of A&A are committed to financial transparency relating to the S2O programme. In support of this objective, Astronomy & Astrophysics will publish a Transparency Report every year that the journal is published under the S2O model.

Subscribe to Open – open access

Every year, existing library customers are asked to continue to subscribe, and when subscribers commit in enough numbers, A&A publishes that year’s content in open access.

Subscribe to Open – subscriber-only access

If support is insufficient, e.g. because institutions decide to cancel their subscription or delay their subscription payments significantly, the content from that year will be accessible to subscribers only. Authors wishing or required to publish in open access can then opt for the Open Access Option to have their article published in open access, as per below.

2023 – open access

The A&A Board of Directors and EDP Sciences are pleased to announce (03/05/2023) that A&A will continue to be published open access in 2023, for a second year, under the terms of this transformative model. See the press release for more information.

2022 – open access

The A&A board of directors and EDP Sciences are pleased to announce (04/04/2022) that A&A has now received the required level of support and will be published open access in 2022 under the terms of this transformative model. From 4th of April 2022, newly accepted A&A articles will publish under a CC-BY 4.0 license allowing authors to retain the copyright and others to share and adapt the content. Content already published or accepted before the 4th of April will be released in free access (freely accessible to all, but not under a CC-BY license). See the FAQs for more information.

  Read the 2022 Transparency Report.

Subscribe to Open – subscriber-only access – information and arrangements

If the journal is not publishing in open access under Subscribe to Open due to insufficient subscriptions, then the following options and arrangements will apply.

Open access option

In the event that the journal is not publishing in open access under Subscribe to Open, then an Open Access Option is available. Authors can pay a fee of 1650 euros (2025 prices) to make their online article perpetually, universally, and freely accessible.

EDP Sciences has signed with the Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) a German National article processing charges (APC) agreement. If you are a corresponding author affiliated with German academic institutions including universities and research institutions, not affiliated with a Max Planck Institute (whose authors benefit from an even more favorable agreement -see below), you can publish in Astronomy & Astrophysics at a 20 percent discounted APC (article processing charges) price.

Transformative open access agreements

Corresponding authors of French Institutions (see list of institutions) and Max Planck Institute in Germany benefit from free gold open access.

Green open access

The Publisher and A&A encourage arXiv archiving under a non-exclusive license or self-archiving of the final PDF file of the article exactly as published in the journal and without any period of embargo.

In addition, authors supported in whole or in part by cOAlition S organisations are entitled to self-archive their author accepted manuscripts, without embargo, under a CC BY license in an Open Access repository of their choice.

Free access

Free sections

All Letters to the Editor and all articles published in the following sections:

• Atomic, molecular, and nuclear data
• Astronomical instrumentation
• Catalogs and data
• Numerical methods and codes

are in free access at no cost to the authors.

Archives in free access

All articles published in the other sections of the Journal become freely accessible 12 months after publication.

Latest articles FREE

This service allows non-subscribers to the journal to gain free access to the full edition of the most recent articles of A&A on the EDP Sciences website. The Latest articles FREE service requires registration and is meant to be used by individuals for their private studies or scholarly research, and not for commercial benefit. See https://www.aanda.org/component/services/?label=laf

Masthead

Details

Published on 05 October 2006

This journal is published and distributed by:

EDP Sciences
17, avenue du Hoggar
Parc d'activités de Courtabœuf
91944 Les Ulis Cedex
France
Phone: +33 1 69 18 75 75
Fax: +33 1 69 28 84 91

on behalf of:

The Board of Directors

Publications Manager: Agnès Henri
Publishing Editor: Anne Ruimy
Production Manager: Dominique Honoré
A&A Production Team Manager: Fabienne Déliat
Journal Managers: Anne-Cécile Moreau, Lucile Mulet

Editors of A&A

Details

Published on 24 April 2006

Editor-In-Chief

Observatoire de Grenoble
Université Joseph Fourier
IPAG
B.P. 53
F-38041 Grenoble Cedex 9
France
Tel.: (33-4) 76 51 42 06
Fax: (33-4) 76 44 88 21
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Thierry Forveille

Thierry Forveille is an astronomer at Observatoire de Grenoble, which is part of the University of Grenoble, in Southeastern France. His primary research interest is to understand how planets form around stars. He studies both the disks in which those planets (will) form, using ALMA and the IRAM telescopes, and the resulting planet populations around mature very low mass stars, using primarily radial velocity monitoring. He is is excited about the many new tools that are becoming available or being built to find and characterize extrasolar planets.

Forveille studied physics at Ecole Normale Superieure, in Paris, and did his PhD thesis work at the University of Grenoble, with an interruption while he helped commission the IRAM 30m telescope near Granada, Spain. He became an assistant astronomer at Observatoire de Grenoble immediately after his PhD and has worked there ever since, except for a six years stint at the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope in Hawaii. He became an associate editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics in 2006 and has been the editor in chief of the journal since 2012.

Associate Editor-in-Chief

João Alves

Managing Editor

Service d'Astrophysique
CEA Saclay, Orme des Merisiers
F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex
France
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David Elbaz

David Elbaz is director of research in the Astrophysics Department of the CEA Saclay. His primary research interest is to understand how galaxies formed their stars, with an emphasis on the hidden side of star-formation due to dust-obscuration, and what caused the rise and fall of star formation in galaxies at cosmic scales. His work on the study of galaxy formation and evolution has been awarded the Chrétien Award from the American Astronomical Society in 2000 and the Jaffé Award from the French Academy of Sciences (Fondation de l'Institut de France) in 2017.

He has been the head of the "Cosmology and Galaxy Evolution" laboratory from 2001 to 2019 and a member of the Astronomy Working Group advising the European Space Agency for the selection of its future satellites from 2015 to 2018. Since 2017, he is the president of the Scientific Council of the National Program on Cosmology and Galaxies for CNRS-INSU, France. He is a member of the SPICA satellite Science Study Team for ESA and co-leads the Science Working Group on Galaxies for the Euclid satellite. He has been the managing editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics since 2018.

Letters Editor-In-Chief

University of Vienna
Department of Astrophysics
Türkenschanzstraße 17
1180 Vienna
Austria
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João Alves

João Alves is a professor of stellar astrophysics at the University of Vienna, in Austria. His primary research interest is to understand how diffuse interstellar gas clouds form, evolve, and eventually collapse to form stars and planets. He is excited about the exploration of the European Space Agency’s newly released Gaia satellite data, the upcoming European Extremely Large Telescope, and the search for intelligent life in the universe.

Alves studied physics at Universidade de Lisboa, in Portugal, did his PhD thesis work at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and moved to Münich, Germany, to become a European Southern Observatory (ESO) fellow. He became an ESO staff member and head of the visiting astronomers section before moving to southern Spain to take the directorship of the German–Spanish Astronomical Center at Calar Alto. In addition to his professorship at University of Vienna, which he has held since 2010, Alves is the vice-dean of the Faculty of Earth Sciences, Geography and Astronomy. He is a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, sits on the ESO Council, and serves as the Astronomy & Astrophysics letters editor in chief.

Associate Letters Editor-in-Chief

Thierry Forveille

Associate Editors

Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera
Italy

Sergio Campana

Sergio Campana is Dirigente di Ricerca (full astronomer) at the INAF - Osservatorio astronomico di Brera, in Merate Italy. His primary research interest is in high-energy astrophysics, working on X-ray binaries, Gamma-ray bursts, tidal disruption events, and magnetars. He worked on source detection algorithms in X-ray images. He is also active in technology. He contributed building the X-ray telescope (XRT) onboard the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (of which he is responsible for the instrument calibrations) and is the Principal Investigator of the Son of X-shooter (SOXS) spectrometer to be installed at the New Technology Telescope (NTT) at ESO-La Silla.

Campana studied physics at the Università di Pavia with a thesis on quantum gravity and did his PhD thesis at the Università di Milano on accretion onto compact objects. After one year of short visits around, he got a first a temporary position and then a permanent position at the Osservatorio astronomico di Brera and has worked there ever since. He is author of more than 400 papers (20 of which on Nature and Science). He became an associate editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics in 2015.

Observatoire de Paris
France

Françoise Combes

Françoise Combes is professor in College de France, on the chair “Galaxies and Cosmology”. She is an astrophysicist at Paris Observatory, and member of the Academy of Sciences. Her main areas of research are the formation and evolution of galaxies, their dynamics and co-evolution with supermassive black holes, the interstellar medium of galaxies and dark matter models. By her computer simulations, she was the first to discover the mechanism to form bulges in spiral galaxies, through vertical bar resonances. She was also a pioneer in molecular absorptions in front of remote quasars, leading to constraints on fundamental constants variation.

Françoise Combes studied physics at Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS), in Paris, and became ENS assistant professor in 1975. She was deputy director of the Physics Laboratory in Ecole Normale Supérieure from 1985 to 1989, and became an astronomer in Paris Observatory in 1989. She has received several awards, including the CNRS Silver Medal (2001), the Tycho Brahe Prize from the European Astronomical Society (2009) or the Gothenburg Lise Meitner Prize (2017). She was elected member of the European Academy (2009) and president of the French Astronomical Society (2002-2004). She has been an associate editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics since 2003.

Yunnan Observatories
the Chinese Academy of Sciences
China

Zhanwen Han

Zhanwen Han is a professor at the Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His primary research interests include stellar evolution, binary evolution, binary population synthesis, evolutionary population synthesis (spectral synthesis), the formation of various binary-related objects (e.g. double compact objects, progenitors of type Ia supernovae), binary observations with LAMOST survey.

Heidelberg University
Germany

Andreas Koch-Hansen

Andreas Koch-Hansen is an Apl. Professor (extraordinary) at the Center for Astronomy at Heidelberg University. His research interests cover the chemical evolution of star clusters to galaxy evolution and morphology, with a major involvement in large-scale surveys like 4MOST and HERON.

After his studies of physics at Heidelberg University, he obtained his PhD from Basel University on the topic of the Chemodynamical evolution of dwarf galaxies. After various postdoc, fellowship, and lecturer/reader positions throughout the US and the UK, Andreas obtained his permanent position in Heidelberg in 2017. In 2023 he joined A&A as an associate editor in the field of stellar populations.

Tuorlan observatorio
Finland

Rubina Kotak

Rubina Kotak received her Ph.D degree in 2003 from Lund University, Sweden, her thesis title being "Inside Pulsating White Dwarfs: Clues from time-resolved spectroscopy". From 2002 to 2005, she worked at Imperial College London under a fellowship of the Royal Commission of the Exhibition of 1851. From 2005 to 2006, she was an ESO Fellow at Garching. From 2007 to 2017, she was an Associate Professor / Reader at Queen’s Uni. Belfast, UK, after which she started at her current position at the Uni. of Turku, Finland. Her research interests include supernovae, explosive transients, massive stars, nucleosynthesis, and electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational waves.

Observatoire de Paris
France

Emmanuel Lellouch

Emmanuel Lellouch is an astronomer at Observatoire de Paris, France. His primary science interest is to understand the physico-chemical and dynamical processes governing Solar System bodies and extrasolar planets and driving their evolution. His own work includes the study of planetary and satellite atmospheres and of distant small bodies (trans-Neptunian objects, comets). He uses mostly observational approaches, both ground-based and space-borne, with emphasis on sub-mm and infrared spectroscopy. He is also closely following the growing field of characterization studies of extrasolar planets and their atmospheric properties.

Lellouch got his astronomer position after a PhD at Observatoire de Paris and a post-doc at ESTEC. He has since then been working in Paris. He was awarded the Urey Prize of the Planetary Division of the American Astronomical Society in 1995. He became an associate editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics in 2018.

Observatoire de Grenoble
France

David Mouillet

David Mouillet is an astronomer at Grenoble Observatory. His main field of research is exoplanetary systems observed in direct imaging and spectroscopy. The challenge in angular resolution and contrast to observe such systems motivates a strong investment in instrumentation, from upstream R&D exploring new concepts to operational instruments, involving adaptive optics, coronagraphy and/or interferometry.

After a PhD in Grenoble, and some contributions on VLT/NAOS adaptive optics system or VLTI/AMBER 3 beam interferometric combiner, David was the director of 2-m telescope B. Lyot in French Pyrénées (2003-2006). He was then the Project Scientist of VLT/SPHERE high contrast imager (2006-2015) up to on-sky validation. He was chair of INSU-ASHRA, French coordination of high angular resolution instrumentation activties (2015-2020), and member of the NASA/HabEx Science and Technological Definition Team (STDT). He is A&A associate editor since 2019.

University of Franche-Comté
France

Benoît Noyelles

Benoît Noyelles is associate professor at the University of Franche-Comté, in Besançon, France. His primary research interests are the dynamics of comets, and the binary Trans-Neptunian Objects. His scientific evolution started from celestial mechanics and the long-term orbital evolution of the satellites of Jupiter, before moving to their rotation and the geophysical processes affecting it. He also had the opportunity to study the rotation of Mercury, in preparation of the ESA/JAXA mission Bepi-Colombo.

After his PhD at Paris Observatory, he moved to the University of Namur, Belgium, for 12 years, before obtaining his position in Besançon in 2018. He is Secretary of Division A Fundamental Astronomy of the International Astronomical Union, and Associate Editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics since 2019.

University of Crete
Institute of Astrophysics - FORTH
Greece

Vasiliki Pavlidou

Vasiliki Pavlidou is Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Crete in Greece. Her research inerests include cosmology (focusing on large-scale structures, dark matter, and dark energy); multimessenger high-energy astrophysics (using cosmic rays, gamma rays, neutrinos, and lower-energy photons as probes of sources such as supermassive black holes and their relativistic jets, starforming galaxies, and dark matter condensations); the physics of the interstellar medium (interstellar magnetic fields, turbulence and their interplay, as well as the impact of magnetic fields on our understanding of the ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray sky); astrostatistics; and astronomical polarimetry.

Pavlidou studied Physics at the University of Thessaloniki in Greece, and obtained her PhD in Astronomy from the University of Ilinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US. After a Kavli fellowship at the University of Chicago, a NASA Einstein fellowship which she held at Caltech, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, she joined the faculty of the Physics Department of the University of Crete in 2012. She has been the Management Panel Chair of the RoboPol Collaboration since 2013, and she is a founding member of the PASIPHAE Collaboration. She is Affiliated Faculty at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Foundation of Research and Technology - Hellas. In 2014 she was the recipient of the “L’Oreal-UNESCO Award for women in science” for Greece. She has been Associate Editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics since 2023.

Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma
Italy

Laura Pentericci

Laura Pentericci is a researcher at the Observatory of Rome. Her primary research interest is to understand how galaxies formed in the first billion years of the Universe and how they contributed to the reionization process, i.e. the transition from a neutral to fully ionized IGM. In her work she mainly exploits spectroscopic data from large ground based telescopes such as VLT and ALMA, in combination with HST observations. She has led many large observational programs including one of the latest ESO public spectroscopic surveys.

Pentericci studied physics at the University of Bologna then moved to Leiden where she obtained her PhD in astrophysics. After 4 years at the MPIA of Heidelberg as a postdoctoral fellow, she moved back to Italy becoming a permanent INAF staff of the Observatory of Rome. In addition she holds the Extragalactic Astrophysics course at La Sapienza University. She is editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics for the cosmology section since the beginning of 2019.

Liverpool John Moores University
United Kingdom

Maurizio Salaris

Maurizio Salaris is Professor of Stellar Astrophysics at the Liverpool John Moores University, in the United Kingdom. His research interests involve theoretical stellar evolution, stellar physics, and the study of stellar populations, both resolved and unresolved.

He studied physics at the university 'La Sapienza' in Rome, Italy, and worked on his thesis at the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Frascati, near Rome. He then joined the Teramo Astronomical Observatory (Italy), followed by tenures at the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (Spain), and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (Germany) as a Marie Curie Fellow. He moved to Liverpool as a research fellow in 1998, and became full professor in 2009.

In addition to scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, Salaris has published two textbooks on stellar evolution and stellar populations, plus a chapter in a multiauthor textbook on stellar physics. He is an associate editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics since 2018.

Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
Germany

Eva Schinnerer

Eva Schinnerer is a senior staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, where she is leading a research group on Extragalactic Star Formation. She is interested in understanding the physical processes that lead to molecular gas and star formation in galaxies and how these evolve with cosmic time by combining observations across the electro-magnetic spectrum.

After her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, she held a postdoctoral scholarship at the California Institute of Technology working with the Owens Valley Radio Observatory mm-interferometer. Before moving to her current position at MPIA, she was a Jansky fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico, USA. She is editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics since fall 2023.

Universitá di Pisa
Italy

Steve Shore

Steve Shore is professor of astrophysics in the physics department of the University of Pisa, a position he has held since 2003. His observational and theoretical research, rooted in spectroscopy and hydrodynamics, includes classical and recurrent novae, stellar winds and jets, accretion processes in close binary systems, evolution of massive stars, stellar dynamo processes, and interstellar turbulence.

Shore has been a scientific editor of A&A since 2003. He was a scientific editor of the Astrophysical Journal from 1996-2003.

Shore obtained his MSc in Earth and Space Sciences from SUNY-Stony Brook, his PhD in astronomy from the University of Toronto, did postdoctoral research at Columbia University, and has been faculty at Case Western Reserve University, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and, before coming to Europe, a decade as chair in physics at Indiana University South Bend. He has also been an operations astronomer at Space Telescope Science Institute and a team member of the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) on HST at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Observatorio Astronomico Nacional
Spain

Mario Tafalla

Mario Tafalla is senior astronomer at the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional in Madrid, Spain. He studies the earliest stages of the star-formation process, and uses a variety of radio telescopes, including those of IRAM and ALMA, to investigate the physics and chemistry of the star-forming gas. He has analyzed the properties of the cold and quiescent gas in pre-stellar condensations and the supersonic outflows that are powered by protostars. In recent years, he has been expanding his interests to include larger spatial scales and investigate the structure and fragmentation of molecular clouds.

Tafalla studied physics at the Universidad Autonoma in Madrid and did his PhD in the Astronomy Department of the University of California at Berkeley. He spent several years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics before returning to Spain and joining the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional.

European Space Agency
Spain

Yannis Zouganelis

Yannis Zouganelis is an astrophysicist at the European Space Agency in Madrid, Spain. Since 2014, he has been serving as the Deputy Project Scientist of the Solar Orbiter mission, a joint ESA-NASA mission that was launched on 10 February 2020 and will provide close-up, high-latitude observations of the Sun. His primary research focuses on the physics of the solar wind, an out-of-equilibrium semi-collisional plasma that remains poorly understood. In particular, understanding its acceleration and heating is a persistent and challenging astrophysical problem.

Zouganelis studied physics at the University of Athens (Greece), did his PhD at the Observatoire de Meudon (France) and was a Marie Curie fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley (USA). From 2008 to 2013 he was an associate professor of Astrophysics at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, before moving to ESA. He is an associate editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics since 2019.

Editorial Assistants

Isabelle Delpech, Jennifer Martin, and Pascale Monier
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Language Editors

R. Baier and R. Rudy (main Language Editors), H. Kinnan, A. Monod-Gayraud, A. Peter, N. Saint-Geniès, M. Coronado, K. Gilchrist, and R. Chester

Aims and scope

Details

Published on 27 March 2006

Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes original research in astronomy and astrophysics.

The journal is an international consortium governed by a Board of Directors. The Board sets the policies for A&A including general guidelines for publishing, the selection of the Editors, the various financial aspects, as well as membership of new countries.

The mission of A&A is:

1. Publish important original work that stimulates high-quality scientific discourse
2. Safeguard scientific reproducibility and ethical best practices
3. Educate early-career astronomers on scientific writing

A&A is a community journal. Publication decisions are in the sole hands of the Editors charged to implement a rigorous peer-reviewed process. The Editors are astronomers that are independent of any government or administrative body associated with the journal. Detailed publication policies, and research areas, are available on the journal web pages.

A&A promotes diversity and equity in science. A&A embraces open, inclusive, and fair practices that reflect the culture and values of the worldwide community of astronomers.

Indexed in

Details

Published on 27 March 2006

Impact Factor

Databases

Astronomy & Astrophysics is indexed/abstracted in:

• ADS
• CAS
• CDS
• Compendex
• Current Contents
• INIST
• IET INSPEC
• PaperChem
• Physics Abstracts
• Science Citation Index
• SCOPUS
• Zentralblatt MATH

Copyright and permission

Details

Published on 27 March 2006

Before your article can be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A), we require you to grant and assign the entire copyright in it to ESO. The copyright consists of all rights protected by the worldwide copyright laws, in all languages and forms of communication, including the right to furnish the article or the abstracts to abstracting and indexing services, and the right to republish the entire article in any format or medium. In return, ESO grants to you the non-exclusive right of re-publication, subject only to your giving appropriate credit to A&A. This non-exclusive right of re-publication permits you to post the published PDF version of your article on your personal and/or institutional web sites, including ArXiV. The non-exclusive right of re-publication also includes your right to allow reproduction of parts of your article wherever you wish, provided you request the permission to do so from the A&A Editor in Chief (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) and credit A&A. To protect the copyright in your article, the following copyright notice should be included in the credit: “Reproduced with permission from Astronomy & Astrophysics, © ESO”.

At the proof stage, we will require you to read, sign, and return the Copyright Agreement. You will receive it from our production office (EDP Sciences). We cannot publish your article without this approval. The agreement should be signed by the corresponding author (who agrees to inform the co-authors, if any). If the corresponding author is a US Government officer or employee and prepared the article as part of their official duties, they do not own any copyright in it. If at least one of their co-authors is not a US Government employee, one of those non-government authors should sign the Copyright Agreement.

Permission to reprint

Requests for permission to reprint figures or tables which have already been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics and Astronomy & Astrophysics Supplement Series should be addressed to the copyright holders, not to the publishers. The address is:

Professor T. Forveille
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Editorial Office
Observatoire de Paris
61 avenue de l'Observatoire
75014 Paris, France
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Board of Directors

Details

Published on 27 March 2006

Board members

Sponsoring Country	Board of Director Member	Executive Committee*
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Hungary	This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.	Vice Chairperson
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Lithuania	This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.	Chairperson
Netherlands	This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Norway	This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.	Member
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Spain	This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.	Member
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Switzerland	This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.	Member
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Non-Sponsoring Partner	Board of Director Member
ESO	This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Observer Partner	Representative
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* The Editor-in-Chief and the Letters Editor-in-Chief are consultative members
Last update of the Board members on: 14/05/2025

Duties and meetings

The Board of Directors:

• Owns the copyright of the journal through the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
• The Members of the Board are appointed by the scientific organizations of the adhering countries.
• Decides on general publication policy.
• Appoints the Editors, who are responsible for deciding what is published in the journal.
• Places contracts for the publication of the journal with the help of the ESO.

Annual meeting of the Board of Directors

• The Editors present the Editors report for the preceeding year.
• The finances of the Board of Directors for the following year are approved. These include the national contributions paid by the member countries, and the budget for the editorial offices
• The Board of Directors agrees with the publishers the number of pages to be published in the following year. The price per page to be published is specified by the contract with the publisher which is signed every five years. The institutional subscription for the following year is then determined by the number of pages to be published.
  

Member countries

The below map shows the current geographic reach of the countries in the A&A Agreement (“sponsoring countries”). Authors from sponsoring countries benefit from free publication in the Journal. Page charges apply otherwise.

Journal's Presentation (PDF)

Details

Published on 27 March 2006

See Journal's Presentation (PDF).

Astronomy and Astrophysics: A European Journal

Details

Published on 27 March 2006

The history of the creation of Astronomy and Astrophysics

by
S.R. Pottasch

Kapteyn Astronomical Institute

History began with the meeting of 8 April 1968 at the Leiden Observatory. Everything that happened before that date can be considered as pre-history. It is essential to understand the pre-history to make sense of the history, but it is not easy to describe. This is because it consists of unrecorded discussions of individuals in small groups, feelings concerning whether ones papers are being read, etc. And all this must be put in the context of a rapidly expanding European astronomical community with an outdated publication structure.

In the early 1960's European publication was splintered. In the best cases each country had its own publication(s); this was sometimes also true of smaller countries. In addition most observatories had their own publications, which were sometimes simply reprinted articles that appeared elsewhere, but sometimes were the only source of original work. This system worked more or less when there was a limited number of astronomers; in that case it was possible for authors to know who was working in their particular field, and to send these persons reprints. As the number of astronomers increased, this system began to break down. It is easy to imagine that a substantial number of astronomers blamed the publishing situation for the fact that their work was not having the impact that they expected.

The following journals were active in western Europe at this time (with the date of founding in parenthesis).

In addition other journals existed in Italy, East Germany, Scandinavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The number of subscriptions to these journals was roughly 300 to 450 except for Monthly Notices which was higher. This probably was due to the large number of amateurs who subscribed and not to a substantially larger number of astronomers. The Astrophysical Journal, on the other hand, did have a substantially larger number of astronomer subscribers. While many of these subscriptions were American, personal subscriptions to the ApJ by European astronomers was much more common than personal subscriptions to European journals by Americans.

The financial situation of each of the European journals was different. The French journals were completely financed by the government (CNRS). The ZfAP was owned and financed by a private publishing house (Springer Verlag). The Dutch journal was financed from the budget of the individual Dutch observatories. The Monthly Notices was owned and financed by the Royal Astronomical Society. The choice of the editor, and the editorial policy was thus not always in the hands of astronomers.

When I came to Groningen University in 1963 I was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the BAN by the directors of the Dutch astronomical institutes. In the course of the first year in this function, I became aware of several important shortcomings in the journal. First of all there was not an adequate refereeing system. The articles were submitted through the directors of the astronomical institutes who were responsible for the scientific content. This is a form of refereeing which works better in small institutes than in large ones. Secondly the publication time was sometimes long. This was because it was necessary to wait with publication until sufficient articles were submitted to fill an issue. This could cause a delay of six months in publication, but it was unpredictable. Thirdly, because the Dutch astronomical community was small and specialized, the BAN was read more often only by astronomers in these fields. This led to a growing feeling that the journal was not widely read, and that when one had an important result it should be published elsewhere. A final difficulty was that the journal was distributed free of charge to the staff and students. Because of the easy access the students consulted the BAN too often, and the other astronomical journals too little. It generated `inbreeding'.

   Jean-Louis Steinberg became Editor-in-Chief of the Ann.d'Ap. at about the same time (1963). We knew each other quite well since 1959 when I had worked at the Meudon Observatory. We met several times in the course of the following years to discuss the problems of publication. The Ann.d'Ap. had problems similar to those faced by the BAN with the additional problem that the widespread use of the French language discouraged certain groups of astronomers from reading it. We decided to investigate the possibility of combining the two journals, and initiated discussions in our respective countries. As might be expected, the initial reactions were reserved, but still encouraging. One of the reservations was whether the combination of only the two journals was a big enough step considering the difficulties which were involved. One encouraging reaction was from the director of publications of the CNRS, Y. Mazière, who saw the possibilities in internationalizing French publications and who lent his full support to the project.

At about the same time I received an invitation from A. Reiz, at that time the director of the Copenhagen Observatory, to visit with the purpose of discussing the possibility of combining the Scandinavian journals and Observatory publications with the BAN. The spontaneous interest of the Scandinavian astronomers led to contact with the Swedish ministry, whose representative, Dr. G.W. Funke, immediately took an active interest in the formation of a European journal. A meeting took place in February 1967 in Copenhagen. Present were the directors of all Scandinavian astronomical institutes (4 Swedes, 3 Danes, 2 Finns, Jensen representing Oslo and Funke) and myself, representing the Dutch. There was agreement in principle to establish a joint Scandinavian-Dutch journal, and a meeting to work out the details was to take place later in the Netherlands. This meeting never took place because the possibility of establishing a larger journal took precedence. The Scandinavians made it clear however, that if a larger journal was not set up, they would establish their own journal.

The two major countries for which problems existed were Germany and Great Britain. The situation in these countries was similar in the sense that both had existing astronomical journals. There was an important practical difference however, since the ZfAP was owned by its publisher while MNRAS was owned by the Royal Astronomical Society. This difference was, at least to some extent, responsible for the way in which the German and British astronomers viewed the situation. The German astronomers who were most active in this matter are: the chairman of the Council of West German Observatories, L. Biermann, the Director of ESO and the Hamburg Observatory, O. Heckmann, and W. Fricke. All were strong proponents of a European journal. They all felt that it was not an important priority to try to incorporate the ZfAp into the European journal. They felt that the German ministry would financially support the new journal and that the ZfAp would eventually disappear. The British astronomers looked at the situation differently. The most important contact was D.H. Sadler, director of the Greenwich Observatories, who was very sympathetic to the idea of a European journal. Another was F. Graham Smith. The subject was discussed at a meeting of the Council of the RAS on 13 October 1967, after arguments were assembled by letter. A merger of MNRAS with other journals was rejected. The arguments given were (1) that MNRAS was an old journal with a long tradition, and (2) that the Royal Astronomical Society would have little function if MNRAS were given up. This last argument probably weighed heavily, since the sale of MNRAS was by far the largest source of income for the R.A.S. This decision was painful because the MNRAS was highly regarded by the continental European astronomers.

This had been the second painful event that had occurred in 1967. The first was the announcement by Z. Kopal (in a letter dated June) that a new journal had been formed. Besides Kopal, very few astronomers were involved in its formation. The financial basis for this journal was the willingness (perhaps desire) of the Reidel Publishing Co. to do the publishing. Reidel was at the same time owner of the journal. The new journal, called "Astrophysics and Space Science" was not the only astronomical journal published by Reidel, and there was some suspicion that it was formed on Reidel's initiative. Though this has been denied, the project was kept completely secret until Kopal's announcement, for what Reidel called "commercial reasons". It was hard for astronomers to see in this new journal a replacement for the existing national journal for several reasons. First of all it was seen as a commercial undertaking in which the wishes and desires of the astronomers were subordinate to those of the publishers. Furthermore, there were no checks on the scientific quality, since the editor was appointed for an indefinite term by the publisher. For these reasons various astronomers (among them J.H. Oort and J.C. Pecker) wrote letters to Reidel and to Kopal protesting the formation of the new journal, and using as argument the ongoing discussions on the merger of the European journals. Kopal's answer was interesting. In a letter dated 7 August 1967 addressed to Oort, Kopal says "As to the possibility of an European journal, I heard the idea being mooted about at least for 10-15 years now - usually to forestall some other budding development; and when this aim has been accomplished the project went back again to slumber. I am afraid Great Britain will sooner join the European Common Market than all west-European astronomers will agree on a joint journal; neither you nor I may alas live long enough to see it happen."

Contrary to Kopal's insight, the European astronomers were serious. At the beginning of November 1967 the Dutch astronomers met to discuss the situation. They concluded that it would be desirable to form a new journal sponsored by France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Scandinavia. They added the stipulation that the European Southern Observatory be asked to sponsor the journal as well. They agreed to give up the BAN when the new journal was formed. I was asked to inform the French of this, which I did through contact with Steinberg. He had already prepared a note on the subject, in which he came to the conclusion that a merger of European journals was not only desirable but necessary as well. With this note as basis, Steinberg and Denisse called a meeting of the French astronomers. The meeting, which took place in December 1967, was attended by all astronomers with a Ph.D. level or higher. The result was that 75 % of those present agreed that a new journal was desirable. Steinberg and I then prepared a proposal which can best be described as the "ground rules" for a new journal. This proposal was then sent to Reiz, the chairman of the Scandinavian group for their opinion. Steinberg contacted the Belgians. In a less formal way several German and Italian astronomers were also informed.

At this point it was necessary to discuss the matter in a more formal manner. In a letter dated 27 March 1968 I invited a number astronomers to a meeting on 8 April 1968 at the Observatory in Leiden. The purpose of the meeting (as stated in the letter) was fourfold.  

Those who attended the meeting, aside from Steinberg and myself, were: Reiz(Scan.), van Bueren(NL), Ledoux (Belg.), Schatzman(F), Mazière(F), Oort(NL), and Biermann(G). Velghe(Belg.), Swings(Belg.) and Funke(Scan.) wrote that they were sympathetic with the plans but were unable to come. In addition Funke wrote that the Swedish Research Council was interested in sponsoring the journal. ESO representatives Heckmann and Blaauw were not in Europe, but indicated that ESO would like to co-sponsor the journal. The minutes of the meeting were taken by Mrs. Ondei, Oort's secretary.

All persons present saw the desirability of merging the existing journals to form, on the widest possible European basis, a new journal. It was proposed that the new journal be called 'ASTRONOMY and ASTROPHYSICS, A European Journal'. Steinberg stated that the French astronomers had agreed to stop publication of the Ann.d'Ap when the new journal begins publication, but the CNRS was yet to approve this step. Oort stated that the Dutch were in principle agreed to stop publication of the BAN.

The main policy making body of the new journal was to be the "Board of Directors", consisting of senior astronomers or government representatives of the sponsoring countries. It would normally meet once a year to discuss the yearly report of the Editor and the state of the journal. It would also elect the Editor(s) and approve the appointments to the Editorial Board. Each country was responsible for the appointment of its member(s). New sponsoring countries would mean an expansion of the "Board of Directors". Most of those present felt a single editor, appointed for 5 years, was optimal. However in the initial stages of the journal two editors, of different nationality, were proposed, which was to ensure that no individual country would dominate the journal.

Articles could be submitted by citizens of any country in the world. Acceptance would depend only on its scientific quality. There would be no page charges. The journal would be the property of the astronomers, represented by the "Board of Directors", who would be responsible for the scientific content. A publisher would be contracted to print and distribute the journal. He would be responsible for the technical quality of the journal and for its promotion and sales.

Because the "Board of Directors" had no legal status, a number of problems arose. For example, the CNRS was not able to send funds to a private organization outside of France. And who had the authority to sign a contract with the publisher? To circumvent the possibility that a treaty among the sponsoring countries would be necessary, which would involve several years delay, it was thought desirable to involve ESO as one of the sponsors, and let ESO handle the finances and the legal side of the journal. The choice fell on ESO, although the IAU and ESRO (the present ESA) were also considered, both because most of the countries acting as sponsors were also members of ESO and vice-versa, and because ESO was sympathetic to the proposed journal. At the time of the meeting only informal contact had been made with ESO, and although the initial response was positive, the matter was to be formally discussed by the ESO council at its meeting in July.

The question of who should publish the journal was raised. Two offers were already made, one from Reidel Publishing Co., the other from North Holland Publishing Co. That from Reidel was 10-15 % cheaper, but after much discussion it was decided not to further consider Reidel as long as he continued to publish Astrophysics and Space Science. Furthermore his ability to publish the journal for a longer period at the price quoted was questioned.

It was agreed that the following "countries" would support the journal financially and would be represented on the Board of Directors: France (with 4 representatives), Netherlands (2), Scandinavia (2), Belgium (1) and ESO (1). Concerning Germany, the situation was less clear. Biermann stated that, although the ZfAp would continue for the time being, this did not preclude German participation as a sponsor of A &A. He further indicated that many German astronomers, especially of the younger generation, favored an international journal. All present felt that it would be important to have German participation right from the beginning. Steinberg and I (as editors of the two largest journals which would cease publication) were asked to write a letter to the Council of West German Observatories requesting it to sponsor the new journal. Germany would be free to decide on the number of representative it would have on the Board of Directors.

It was considered desirable to begin publication of the first issue of A &A on January 1969. The copy must be in the hands of the publisher by 30 September 1968 at the latest. It must be refereed before that date. The future timetable: agreement by the (astronomical) councils who act as sponsors and financiers should be obtained by the end of June. The Board of Directors should meet directly after the ESO meeting to appoint the Editor(s), decide on the publisher and consider the appointment of an Editorial Board. The journal was beginning to take shape, and quickly.

The next meeting took place on 3 July 1968 in the University Foundation, Egmontstraat, Brussels. This was scheduled to coincide with an ESO Council meeting in Brussels, which had just been completed. Although decisions were to be made at this meeting, as they were at the April meeting, this is not yet considered as the first meeting of the Board of Directors. The participants were the same as at the Leiden meeting, except for van Bueren and Ledoux. In addition, Heckmann (ESO), Blaauw (ESO), Velghe (B), Fehrenbach (F), Kovalevski (F) and Voigt (G) were present. The minutes were taken by Miss Geier (ESO) and I was chairman.

The situation at the beginning of the meeting was as follows:

France The CNRS has endorsed the merging of all major French astronomical publications in A &A, and has agreed to pay a $ 24.000,- subsidy. The French delegates to the Board will be Mazière, Delhaye, Schatzman and Fehrenbach.

Netherlands The Dutch Astronomical Council has agreed to merging the BAN in A&A, and has agreed to pay $ 10.000,- subsidy. The Dutch delegates will be Oort and van Bueren.

Belgium The Belgian delegate will be Velghe, but it is not yet official. The subsidy will be $ 3.000,- in 1969.

Scandinavia The delegates will be Stromgren and Funke, and the subsidy $ 10.000,-.

Germany The Germans now have agreed to sponsor A &A. Biermann, Fricke and Unsold will be the delegates to the Board. The method of paying the subsidy is still under discussion. The possibility of merging the ZfAP depends on negotiations underway with Springer.

ESO The ESO Council agrees to make its administrative and legal services available to A &A. The ESO Council has authorized its Director to conclude (1) a contract with A &A, and (2) a contract with the publisher. It would therefore be possible for ESO to act as financial agent for the Board, although the financial responsibility remains with the Board. ESO would not contribute financially to the journal, although it did not charge for "legal" services rendered to A &A.

The situation as regards a publisher had changed somewhat since the last meeting. There were now four publishing houses which had made offers: Springer Verlag, Reidel, North Holland and Wolters Noordhoff. Reidel and Wolters Noordhoff were the cheapest, but the reason for not further considering Reidel had been discussed in the previous meeting. The Board considered Wolters Noordhoff too inexperienced. Springer had indicated in its bid that if it were chosen it would stop publication of the ZfAp. Since this would enhance the chances of success for the new journal, it was attractive. But the meeting felt that this was not a strong enough reason to accept a higher price. Heckmann, voicing the sentiment of the meeting, proposed contacting Springer again to negotiate a price reduction. He stated that "One should not be afraid of dropping Springer, as the ZfAp will slowly die once the new journal is formed." The meeting was adjourned for 20 minutes, while a telephone call was made to Springer. This resulted in the agreement by Springer to lower his bid to that of the lowest bidder. Detailed negotiations were to take place in the near future. Although it was not until October that a final agreement was reached, Springer was hereafter considered as the foremost candidate for publisher of the journal.

At this point another problem arose. Kovalevski, speaking for a group of fundamental astronomers mostly from France, proposed to split the not yet formed journal into two parts: a large one for astronomy and astrophysics, and a smaller one for celestial mechanics. The reason given was the specialized needs for publication in this field. While the meeting was sympathetic to this view, soon after Fricke objected to such a division, since it might lead to a subsequent splitting of the journal into a number of over-specialised journals. Eventually Fricke, Kovalevski and Morando prepared a short paper in which their conditions for publishing on Fundamental Astronomy and Celestial Mechanics were stated. This subject became one of the original sub-sections of the journal, and no further problems were forthcoming.

Toward the end of this meeting the first Editor-in-Chiefs were appointed. Oort took the initiative in proposing "to the Board of Directors" that Steinberg and I should take over this task. We accepted, and later prepared a memorandum on the division of the tasks between us. With this step the date of 1 January 1969 for the start of the journal became more realistic. The biggest problem now was to finalize the contract with the publishers.

The following meeting is officially regarded as the first meeting of the Board of Directors. It took place in Paris on 11 October 1968. The meeting began with a word of welcome by the Director General of the CNRS, Professor Jacquinot. The meeting had been called on at short notice because Mayer-Kaupp, who was in charge of the negotiations for Springer had been away until 23 September, and it was only useful to hold the meeting if a reasonable draft contract was available. Because of the short notice, five of the eleven Board members were unable to attend, so that it was decided that all decisions made were to be provisional.

The first act of the Board was to elect Blaauw as its first Chairman. Mazières was elected as Treasurer of the Board. The main business of the meeting was to discuss the draft contract with the publisher. The advice of the ESO lawyer, Walters, was also available. The Board went through the contract, article by article, and made changes where it saw necessary. Then Mayer-Kaupp, who was present in the building, was invited to attend the meeting and given the proposed changes. He accepted them and the new contract was then adopted by all the Board members present. The contract, between ESO and Springer, would be signed at the next meeting. Since it was now already October and the first issue of the journal was scheduled to appear in January, this had to be a formality.

Other matters discussed were (1) an agreement between the Board of Directors and the Editors, (2) a draft agreement between the Board and ESO, (3) the matter of Sub-Editors (it was decided that there would be no sub-editors), (4) the composition of the Board of Editors, and (5) the sections which would be listed in the table of contents. Finally the matter of the Supplement Series was discussed. This publication was to be independent of the Main Journal and Springer, and was to be published by the Board of Directors. It was decided to approach Braes of the Leiden Observatory to ask him to take charge of the publishing. All articles would be submitted to the Editors-in-Chief and would only be sent to Braes after they had been refereed and accepted. It was not clear at this time where the binding and mailing would take place. In contrast to the Main Journal a page charge would be levied. The first issue of the Supplement Series appeared in January 1970.

It was clear that a new meeting would be necessary within the near future, if only to sign a contract with the publisher and make certain that no insurmountable problems made it impossible for A&A to appear on time. Therefore the 2nd meeting of the Board of Directors took place on 2 December 1968 at the ESO headquarters on the Bergedorfer Strasse in Hamburg. An interesting sidelight of this meeting was the interest shown by two other countries to become part of the journal. Switzerland sent the director of the Geneva Observatory, J. Golay, as observer, and Italy sent the director of the Trieste Observatory, M. Hack.

This meeting gave an official form to the journal. A contract was signed between the Board and ESO, which now gave a legal status to the decisions of the Board, and enabled it to take financial responsibilities. A contract was signed between ESO (acting for the Board) and Springer Verlag to publish the journal for a 5 year period. A contract was signed between the Board and the Editors for a 3 year period. A memorandum was prepared by the Editors on the sharing of the responsibility for the editorial work, which was discussed by the Board. The Standing Rules for the Board of Directors was approved, which included rules for membership, expansion and financial contributions. A vice-chairman was elected: B. Stromgren. All was now complete: the first issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics was to appear 5 weeks later.  

October 1999